Vibrating sensors, such as for example, vibrating densitometers and Coriolis Flowmeters are generally known, and are used to measure mass flow and other information related to materials flowing through a conduit in the flowmeter. Exemplary flowmeters are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,109,524, U.S. Pat. No. 4,491,025, and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 31,450, all to J. E. Smith et al. These flowmeters have one or more conduits of a straight or curved configuration. Each conduit configuration in a Coriolis mass flowmeter, for example, has a set of natural vibration modes, which may be of simple bending, torsional, or coupled type. Each conduit can be driven to oscillate at a preferred mode.
Some types of mass flowmeters, especially Coriolis flowmeters, are capable of being operated in a manner that performs a direct measurement of density to provide volumetric information through the quotient of mass over density. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,351 to Ruesch for a net oil computer that uses a Coriolis flowmeter to measure the density of an unknown multiphase fluid. U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,100 to Buttler et al. teaches a Coriolis effect densitometer that corrects the density readings for mass flow rate effects in a mass flowmeter operating as a vibrating tube densitometer.
Material flows into the flowmeter from a connected pipeline on the inlet side of the flowmeter, is directed through the conduit(s), and exits the flowmeter through the outlet side of the flowmeter. The natural vibration modes of the vibrating system are defined in part by the combined mass of the conduits and the material flowing within the conduits.
When there is no flow through the flowmeter, a driving force applied to the conduit(s) causes all points along the conduit(s) to oscillate with identical phase or with a small “zero offset”, which is a time delay measured at zero flow. As material begins to flow through the flowmeter, Coriolis forces cause each point along the conduit(s) to have a different phase. For example, the phase at the inlet end of the flowmeter lags the phase at the centralized driver position, while the phase at the outlet leads the phase at the centralized driver position. Pickoffs on the conduit(s) produce sinusoidal signals representative of the motion of the conduit(s). Signals output from the pickoffs are processed to determine the time delay between the pickoffs. The time delay between the two or more pickoffs is proportional to the mass flow rate of material flowing through the conduit(s).
Meter electronics connected to the driver generate a drive signal to operate the driver and also to determine a mass flow rate and/or other properties of a process material from signals received from the pickoffs. The driver may comprise one of many well-known arrangements; however, a magnet and an opposing drive coil have received great success in the flowmeter industry. An alternating current is passed to the drive coil for vibrating the conduit(s) at a desired conduit amplitude and frequency. It is also known in the art to provide the pickoffs as a magnet and coil arrangement very similar to the driver arrangement. However, while the driver receives a current which induces a motion, the pickoffs can use the motion provided by the driver to induce a voltage. The magnitude of the time delay measured by the pickoffs is very small; often measured in nanoseconds. Therefore, it is necessary to have the transducer output be very accurate.
The driver, as noted, often has a magnet mounted to a conduit with an opposing coil mounted to an opposing conduit. An alternating current is passed through the coil, which results in the vibrating of both conduits. The pickoffs are similarly constructed and oriented, except that they generate alternating current signals as a result of driver-produced vibrations that are detected by the pickoffs. Both drivers and pickoffs may have magnet keepers that are mounted to brackets which are typically welded or brazed onto the conduits. It would be ideal to braze the magnet keeper directly to the brackets, but the heat necessary to braze the brackets to the conduits may cause magnets within the magnet keeper to lose field strength. Post-magnetizing an entire flowmeter or sensor assembly is not practical. Therefore, the magnet keepers are attached to brackets that are pre-attached to conduits. Unfortunately, this attachment yields results in alignment inaccuracies due to the tolerances of the fasteners involved in the attachment. The present embodiments are directed to an apparatus and related methods to precisely attach magnet keepers to brackets, and thereby overcome these and other problems, and an advance in the art is achieved.